Fat? Skinny? Something in between? Please join us for a discussion of work that IRLE researchers are doing on America's health care system. What might upcoming reforms look like? And with national reform so uncertain, what are the next steps for health care here in California?   Ken Jacobs chairs the Labor Center at IRLE. His

Steven Pitts and Carol Zabin of the IRLE's Labor Center will discuss how unions' role in the labor market can be leveraged to increase diversity in good jobs.   Steven Pitts is associate chair of the Labor Center at IRLE, where he focuses on job quality and Black workers.       Carol Zabin is a

The gig economy has radically changed the way we think about work. The concern is that workers increasingly do not have employers anymore and are facing lower wages, no access to health and pension benefits, exclusion from safety-net programs, and chronic instability in their incomes and work lives. What does gig work mean for the

The California Policy Lab, launched in January 2017, is committed to improving the lives of Californians through data-driven policy. Come learn about how the lab began and what progress we've made in our inaugural year. We'll talk about our current research projects and our vision for using administrative data to generate transformative evidence for the nation's largest

Although economists agree that Gross National Product is not a measure of social welfare, they don't agree on what broader measure to use. Professor Clair Brown will present an overview of the four major types of measures of economic performance, with the pros and cons of each. Then, with grad student Eli Lazarus, she will

Come learn about the campaign led by the Bay Area Black Worker Center and Justice Reinvestment Coalition that resulted in the Alameda County Re-Entry Hiring Program. The program aims to place Alameda county residents with felony convictions into county jobs. After decades of funding job training programs with abysmal outcomes for placing people into permanent

Each year, the California Student Aid Commission awards Cal Grants - college funds that don't need to be paid back - to eligible California students. How can we get more students to take advantage of them? The California Policy Lab is testing whether letters designed with simplicity and behavioral nudges can increase the rates at

In October of 2017, Governor Brown signed into law a statewide ban-the-box (BtB) policy, which went into effect January 1, 2018. How do policies like this one affect the perceptions and experiences of formerly incarcerated job seekers? Drawing from surveys of probationers, Sandra has investigated what the formerly incarcerated know about the California's BtB policies;

Using an event study framework, Godøy’s research documents a sharp rise in employment and earnings of single mothers after state minimum wage increases. Further, these effects can be shown to be concentrated among jobs that pay the minimum wage or slightly higher – high-wage employment remains unaffected. Panel models find the largest effects among mothers

Please join us for our year-end IRLE-URAP Showcase, featuring UC Berkeley undergraduates who have been working with faculty mentors on research projects throughout the semester. This event provides students the platform to share their research, and our community to become inspired by their passion and hard work. This semester we will have eleven students presenting on

Can higher earnings be attributed to higher minimum wage policies, or industry responses to wage increases? Nadler’s research measures the effects of six citywide minimum wages that ranged up to $13 in Chicago, the District of Columbia, Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle, employing event study and synthetic control methods. Using aggregate data on

An important next step in understanding how firm strategies affect the quality of jobs and inequality in the US overall is to more systematically examine the reallocation of labor across organizations, as a result of firms’ or governments’ decisions to purchase goods and services from other firms. I refer to this process as domestic inter-firm

Each year, IRLE hosts visiting scholars and visiting student researchers who come to Berkeley from all over the world to work on projects related to labor and employment. At this workshop, visitors will present research at various stages and receive feedback from their peers and the wider community. For more information on our visitors, please

  A central concern for racial and ethnic minorities is having an equal opportunity to advance group interests via the political process. There remains limited empirical evidence, however, whether democratic policies designed to foster political equality are connected causally to social and economic equality. In this paper, we examine whether and how the expansion of

Please join us for our year-end IRLE-URAP Showcase, featuring UC Berkeley undergraduates who have been working with faculty mentors on research projects throughout the semester. This event provides students the platform to share their research, and our community to become inspired by their passion and hard work. Presentation schedule: 11:00 am: Teresa Kabba (mentor Erin Kerrison): The

The recent surge in teacher strikes across the country brought to attention many issues that concern public education including class sizes that are too large, inadequate staffing of critical positions, crumbling building, outdated textbooks, and teacher pay. Allegretto has been tracking teacher pay and compensation for fifteen years. In this talk, she will present her